JACOB ADOPTS A “NO RETOUCHING” POLICY FOR PHOTOS OF ITS MODELS

“As a socially responsible company, JACOB has always made an effort to promote a healthy image of the female body. By adopting an official policy and broadcasting it publicly, we hope to reverse the trend in digital photo manipulation that has become excessive in our industry,” says spokesperson and Communications Director Cristelle Basmaji. “Our decision to never reshape the bodies of our models is particularly innovative for our JACOB Lingerie campaigns.”
The basis of the new “no retouching” policy is to promote an honest and realistic image of the female body. However, JACOB is not against all forms of touch-ups. Certain digital enhancements cannot be avoided in order to produce an image the size that is required for advertising. In all transparency, JACOB will continue to retouch its photos in some regards, as there will always be a need to calibrate colours for better product representation and to even out skin tone or erase tattoos and scars.”

Personally, I think this is an amazing step forward for the fashion industry, and I hope other retailers take note! Obviously, this still isn’t an “average” body type, but to expect JACOB to use “real women” and not edit the photographs would be ridiculous. I mean, there have been many studies showing that women buy less when the adverts feature plus-size or “average” models. It’s a fact, and you can’t fight it, so you also can’t expect JACOB to knowingly hurt their bottom line (a lot) by featuring average-sized models! This alone, ie, not thinning out their models even further, is simply phenomenal.

I contacted JACOB and asked if we could see the images mentioned in (but not attached to) the release, and they sent them our way quickly, even asking if we could forward them a link to the post once it was live.The first image is the raw one, from the photoshoot, the second image is the one used in the current campaign, and the third is what the image would have looked like in a previous campaign. Feel free to click the photo above to enlarge it!

We did a quick shape overlay and comparison of the new retouching standards vs. the old one, and added a few notes to point out some of the changes. To put it bluntly? Legs! HIPS! We like.